来源：《新科学家》
原文见刊日期：2022年6月25日
The first cancer treatments were brutal: in 3000 BC, Ancient Egyptians started removing breast tumours by burning them off with a tool they called a “fire drill”. Even when chemotherapy arrived in the 1940s, it was essentially poison that attacked cancer cells and the body alike, resulting in terrible side effects.
最早的癌症治疗非常残忍：公元前3000年，古埃及人开始用一种被他们称为“火钻”的工具烧掉乳房肿瘤，从而切除肿瘤。即使化疗在20世纪40年代出现，它本质上也是一种同时攻击癌细胞和身体的毒药，会有可怕的副作用。
Fortunately, we are now entering an era of “precision medicine” in which cancer treatments can be tailor-made for individuals so they get the best responses with the fewest side effects.
幸运的是，我们现在正在进入一个“精准医疗”的时代，在这个时代，癌症治疗可以为个人量身定制，以最小的副作用获得最好的治疗效果。
One approach being tested involves the use of “personalised vaccines”. We tend to think of vaccines as a means to prevent disease, like covid-19, but they can also be used therapeutically. Personalised vaccines are made on a custom basis and train an individual’s immune system to recognise unique markers on their cancer, so that it can then launch a targeted attack.
正在测试的一种方法涉及使用“个性化疫苗”。我们倾向于认为疫苗是一种预防疾病的手段，如新冠肺炎，但它们也可以用于治疗。个性化疫苗是在定制的基础上制造的，并训练个人的免疫系统识别其癌症的独特标记，这样它就可以发起针对性攻击。
These vaccines have only been tested in small clinical trials so far, but the results have been astonishing. One of the first people to try one described how his lung tumours – which had been so big they were protruding out of his back – began shrinking before his very eyes. He is now completely cancer-free.
到目前为止，这些疫苗只进行了小规模的临床试验，但结果令人震惊。一个第一批尝试这种方法的人描述了他的肺肿瘤是如何在他的眼前开始萎缩的——他的肺肿瘤大到从他的背部突出来。他的癌症现在已经痊愈了。
Even some infamously hard-to-treat cancers, such as those of the brain and pancreas, have been eliminated in some cases using personalised vaccines. One of the main benefits is that this approach causes almost no side effects because of its precise targeting of tumours.
即使是一些极其难以治疗的癌症，如脑癌和胰腺癌，在某些情况下也已经通过使用个性化疫苗消除了。这种方法的一个主要好处是几乎没有副作用，因为它可以精确地定位肿瘤。
Of course, making a unique vaccine for each person is costly and time-consuming. But if this continues to have spectacular results, there will be a strong appetite to drive down cost and manufacturing time.
当然，为每个人制造一种独特的疫苗既昂贵又耗时。但如果这种做法继续取得令人瞩目的结果，那么降低成本和缩短制造时间的需求将会非常强烈。
Before becoming household names in 2020 for developing covid-19 vaccines, BioNTech in Germany and Moderna in the US were two of the first companies to begin working on personalised cancer vaccines. They are now pumping the profits earned from their coronavirus jabs into larger clinical trials of cancer vaccines, so we can find out for sure if they work.
德国的BioNTech和美国的莫德纳在2020年成为开发新冠疫苗的家喻户晓的公司之前，是最早开始研究个性化癌症疫苗的两家公司。他们现在正在将新冠疫苗赚取的利润用于更大规模的癌症疫苗临床试验，因此我们可以确定癌症疫苗是否有效。
This suggests there could be a silver lining to the pandemic – it may have sped up a revolution in cancer care, with not an Ancient Egyptian fire drill in sight.
这表明，这场大流行里可能有一线光明——它可能加速了癌症护理的革命，癌症的治疗不必再看到古埃及式的火钻。